Gathering of the Tribes Part I

[Guest guest]

Kumbha Mela is like a gathering of the tribes. There are Shivites, Vaisnavas,

Shaktas, Yogis, Jnanis, Karmakandis, Tantriks, followers of Kabir, you name it

they are here. So it was not unlikely that eventually the Rainbow People would

show up here too. And they did. The Mela Administration perhaps refused to give

them any land, but one Tyagi Baba had a mango orchard on the far northern end

of the Mela area and he gave it to them to use.

 

All day long young foreigners streamed into our camp asking for the Rainbow

Camp. When they found it was an hour and half walk from our camp, we let many

of the cleaner types stay in our foreigner's dormitory. We invited them all for

prasad, so we made many friends.

 

Jaya Vijay was the first to think of going there, so he took a few buckets of

halevah and went there to distribute prasadam in the evenings. Even when most

of the Gurukulis came, after a few days, they shifted there. I assume they felt

a little uncomfortable from the glances they got from the older devotees and

the Indian devotees as they sat around the camp boys and girls chatting

together. Maybe for some other reasons also. There was a very strong old-days

preaching mood in the camp and they were more in young enjoying mood so it

didn't mix well. Still many of them showed up for Harer Nama and led some

ecstatic kirtans and Hari Bhakti wowed the crowd in the pandal with his

Bhajans.

 

Then Prithu showed up with about twenty devotees. As soon as heard about the

Rainbow Camp, he got some halevah and headed up there with a few devotees,

kartals and mridunga. One evening Basu Ghosh and his companion, Sanskritanand,

went with them.

 

Then one night I got a phone call from the other camp that a friend was there

looking for me. It was one of the leaders of the Rainbow People named Fantuzzi,

whom I have know since '69. I was very excited, since the Mela was almost over,

and I have always met Fantuzzi at Kumbha Mela and was wondering the day before

that the Mela is almost over and I haven't seen Louie (as I know him). So we

sent a car to pick him up along with his two young female companions. When they

arrived, Basu Ghosh and Sanskritanand were sitting with us in the tent. We

began to explain to everyone our long relationship.

 

In '68, I had dropped out of Notre Dame and had gone down to Bloomington

Indiana to be with some nice people I met from the University of Indiana there.

Beside the campus there is a huge meadow on the side where the campus is there

is a little stream with a few wooden bridges over it. On one bridge, I saw what

appeared to be an Indian Sadhu standing. He was wearing only some bikini type

swim suit and was almost black with long very curly locks hanging down from his

head. He looked just like some young Indian Baba.

 

Attracted by him, I immediately strolled over to where he was standing. He was

talking to a pretty young co-ed who was staring at him with wide eyes as he was

very fervently and animatedly preaching to her that everything was God. He

plucked the pen from her hand to illustrate and pronounced with firm conviction

that even this pen was God. Wow! I thought, this guy is heavy. We became the

best of friends as in those days we all had some form of Mayavad speculation in

our fuzzy brains.

 

His name was Louie. He was from Spanish Harlem in New York, Puerto Rican. His

sisters were all prostitutes at 12 years old and addicted to smack. His

brothers were all pimps. Somehow he had transcended this very mundane existence

to search for the absolute truth. And a few young girls also.

 

We had many pastimes together. We lived in a house where there was about a

dozen young people mostly students along with cat with her kittens, a hamster,

a guinea pig, a dog, and a spider monkey. We even had one friend named Duck

since he looked a bit like Donald Duck! We were all seekers, trying in our own

blind way to find the meaning of life. Louie and I had many pastimes together

in that house which we named Animal Farm.

 

One day it was a full moon. Ravi Shankar was in town for a Sitar concert at the

university staying in the campus guest house. One of the people from Animal

Farm, Patrick, was practicing Sitar. Someone else tabla and tamboura. So at

night we quietly gathered in the full moon underneath his window to serenade

him, in hope that he might throw his merciful glance our way or something.

Since the AC was running and the window was shut tight, maybe he never heard

us. In any event, we never got his glance. Then Louie took my hand and said

solemnly, "Brother, it's full moon. I have to move on." And he left that very

night.

 

Eventually I became a devotee, the first to join in Boulder, Colorado on

Janmastami Day in '69. Later after being initiated we all packed up in the old

cars we had and set off for Ratha Yatra in San Francisco via LA where Srila

Prabhupada was staying. We were selling Spiritual Sky incense to the stores we

passed on the way to finance our trip. Since we were going to LA first, we

headed south and came to Santa Fe. Suddenly we were on a very narrow street

that had the type of shops that would buy incense, but the street had no place

to park. A side street appeared and we turned and a hundred feet down the lane

was an L-shaped building with a large open space in front due to the shape.

 

We pulled in and looked up to see an old wood burned sign hanging from the

building saying, "This is Krishna Consciousness". This was the expression

Prabhupad used to use in the old days when, somehow or other by mistake, we did

something right. The sign, we learned later, had been rescued from the old

center that Harer Nama Prabhu had opened in Santa Fe and where Toshan Krishna

and Hari Vasara had joined.

 

It was like a hippie, health food, yoga retreat. The next surprise was, there

was Louie! We embraced each other warmly. While some went off to sell incense,

I went into the kitchen and began to make a feast for all of them. We went out

and bought all kinds of fruit and natural fruit laced yogurt. We had a huge

kirtan in which Louie danced like a mad man and served prasad to all. When we

left the next day, I embraced Louie and invited him to come for Ratha Yatra in

SF.

 

In SF, many days we went to Berkeley to chant in front of the University. One

day as the van was pulling away from the curb, a devotee shouted that someone

wanted to see me. As we pulled away from the curb, the back door of the van was

still open and there was Louie waving to me. He made it.

 

Louie came for Ratha Yatra and chanted very enthusiastically. Later Prabhupada

led an ecstatic kirtan at the Family Dog Auditorium on the beach. As Prabhupada

left after his lecture and final kirtan, Louie burst through the crowd and fell

down and prostrating himself in front of Srila Prabhupada and touching his

feet. Quite a feat, considering the crowd of devotees like Guru Kripa Maharaja,

et al, who were protecting him.

 

In service to Sri Sri Krishna Balaram,

Deena Bandhu dasa